Post-Fordist state planners, developers, and their entrepreneurial service arm have debased the meaning of 'creativity' to a shallow pretext for the further looting of cities and public wealth. The cookie-cutter aestheticisation of selective zones of our cities (tourist promenades, waterside public art, creative quarters), is a mere fig leaf covering the acts of enclosure and exclusion that cultural regeneration entails. As the sensibilities of the Creative Class are sensationalised, courted, and monetised, the creative possibilities of the dehumanised majority narrow. But as the recession bites, there are signs that dreams of the Creative City are crashing, as the public-purse strings tighten and the financial sector's ability to underwrite the creative industries weakens. In this issue we revel in that possibility, explore artists' creative sabotage of their own regenerative co-optation, and philosophically examine what 'expression' might actually be.Dériving Under the InfluenceChris Jones inspects the wounds opened by Laura Oldfield Ford's pictures of regenerate LondonCG2014: Formulary For a Skewed UrbanismNeil Gray ambushes the cowboy capitalists staking out Glasgow's 'urban frontier'The Creative City In RuinsArtist's project by Nils NormanConcerning Art and Social ChangeBrian Holmes and Marco Deseriis on critical culture within recuperative 'semiocapitalism'All Mouth, No HistoryWilliam Dixon gets gobby with Christian Marazzi and his linguistic analysis of financialisationDebt: The First Five Thousand YearsDavid Graeber gives us the elevator pitch on debt's violent historyHungry GhostSteve McQueen's filmHunger whets Paul Helliwell's appetite for some political contextA Climatic Disorder?John Cunningham clears the air after a meeting between Climate Campers and the NUM'The Simple Expression of Complex Thought'M. Beatrice Fazi splices interactive media and the philosophy of expressionObjective PhantomsKenneth Cox toys with Romanian poet Ghérasim Luca's objects and desires